The easiest way to keep bones healthy is to eat a balanced diet and engage in some weight-bearing exercise. This doesn’t mean that you need to join a gym and work out. Simple walking is good exercise, as is gardening, housework, and regular everyday chores that require you to move your whole body and do some lifting, pushing, and pulling. Overly strenuous activity is not necessary, but strength and movement are. Even elderly people can exercise at their individual safe level of activity and help their bone density. Exercise can help prevent falls and broken bones, since physical activity at any age increases stamina, improves balance and coordination, and improves strength.
Bone tissue is living tissue that has specific nutritional needs. Bone tissue is constantly being broken down and rebuilt as a natural process, and a diet that contains the proper nutrients will keep this process working correctly. With aging, the ways that your body uses nutrients will change during this bone rebuilding process. As aging progresses, bone loss normally occurs faster than the rebuilding process. There are three main things that keep your bones strong: diet, hormones (especially in women), and exercise. Healthy bones are the result of all three of these factors being in harmony.
A well-balanced diet for bone health needs to include calcium, magnesium, potassium, and vitamin D. It is always better if the dietary intake of these nutrients comes from natural foods rather than pills, but if you can’t get enough in food, there’s nothing wrong with taking supplements. Vitamin D helps your body use calcium properly, and any supplement you take should have both. Dairy foods are still the most important source of calcium.
Magnesium and potassium are valuable minerals that help avoid bone loss. They are alkali minerals that serve as buffers against all the acid foods you eat, and an acid condition may actually hasten bone loss. Potassium helps the kidneys retain calcium. Metabolic studies have found that sufficient potassium levels can be linked with lower loss of calcium detected in urine, while decreasing potassium intake causes higher levels of calcium loss in urine, so maintaining an adequate potassium level is important.. Adequate protein is also necessary for the body to use these minerals efficiently, and Vitamin K actually helps bone tissue “cement” the calcium into place in bone tissue.
Many times elderly people have dietary restrictions or take medications that interfere with absorption of nutrients. Being underweight is another cause of poor bone health, and of course it can be a symptom of poor diet at any age. There are many reasons that older people may have appetite loss. The loss of smell and taste receptors due to age or medication, dental problems that interfere with eating, and depression are only a few. Maintaining a healthy weight is important to bone health.
Hormones affect bone health, especially in women. As women age, estrogen and progestin production decreases, which can cause a decrease in bone density. Simply replacing hormones can be tricky because there are other health issues involved with the therapy. Hormone replacement therapy can be beneficial to many women, but it is important to work closely with your doctor to get the best results. It can take many weeks or even months to find the correct hormonal balance for each individual. Natural bio-identical hormones are available rather than synthetic, with wonderful results reported.
Getting plenty of exercise is important throughout your life. Aging and naturally slowing down can sometimes make you feel like skipping your exercise routine. But the importance of regular exercise cannot be ignored, for bone health as well as for cardiovascular health, weight control, and a host of other health issues. To stay motivated it often helps to exercise with a friend, or join a group.
http://www.healingdaily.com/conditions/osteoporosis.htm
http://www.naturalremediescures.com/2008/11/increase-bone-density-naturally/
http://www.thedietchannel.com/Improve-Bone-Density.htm
